October 23, 2024
By Liza Vasquez CMC ICF and Jeffrey F. Silber CPA MBA CMC
I Need a Lawyer Today!
As a corporate lawyer, when was the last time you met a potential client in a meeting of an organization, or at a legal convention or at a social function, and this person said to you Thank goodness I met you because I need a lawyer immediately! This basically never happens.
To be fair, some of our clients are criminal lawyers and they have told us that occasionally they do get a panicked call from another lawyer referring a client who urgently needs legal attention in that moment.
But for lawyers working in more corporate environments, it might happen once in a lifetime that someone you just met needs your legal services immediately.
Your understanding of this is critical to the approach you should take when you try to acquire new clients. You must keep this point in mind.
Selling To a Non-Buyer – A Bad Paradigm
Most lawyers do not seem to understand that the potential clients they meet are not looking for legal representation at that moment. Nonetheless, they press ahead in an effort to impress this person with the high quality of their law firm, the scope of the legal services they offer, how responsive they are, how the core quality of the firm is to be service-oriented, how an experienced partner is on top of every case or the important clients they have, they emphasize the fair fees they charge, the value proposition of their services, and so on.
We are horrified that so much of the literature regarding the personal selling of legal services focuses on such pitch lines as these that emphasize the above and similar points.
Alienating a Potential Client Before You Even Get Started.
Why is that life insurance salespeople have such a bad reputation? Generally, it is because they try to sell you insurance soon after you meet them when you had no intention at that moment of buying any life insurance. They can be aggressive, insistent and very annoying.
Aggressively presenting all the reasons a client should work with you and your law firm is the wrong approach when you first meet them. In fact, instead of impressing the potential client, you may antagonize an otherwise excellent potential client to the point where you will be pushing them away; and you might lose the opportunity for good.
It Takes Time to Convert a New Contact into a Client
Research shows that on average, it takes six moments of some form of interaction with a new contact to convert this person and their company into a Fee-Paying Client. If it is not obvious. Let us explain.
It Takes These Three Elements to Convert a Contact into a Client
Why should it take six moments of contact to be hired? This is why.
1) This new contact must like you.
2) This new contact must trust you.
3) This potential client must have an actual legal matter for you to work on.
Getting to Yes with the Three Elements
1) This New Contact Must Like You
It is not necessary to become actual friends with a new contact, but the bare minimum is for you to be friendly so that they have a pleasant and favorable impression of you.
When deciding among several lawyers, the client always picks the lawyer they like, the one with whom they feel the most comfortable. There is no substitute for having good chemistry.
While you are working on building the client’s trust in you, and while you are waiting for your new contact to have a legal matter for you to work on, you should begin a charm offensive. Be as friendly as you can. Remember you do not have to be their friend, but you need to be pleasantly friendly.
It will be in the follow-up in the weeks and months after you meet this person when you demonstrate your friendliness.
How? Every bit of information, no matter how insignificant it may have seemed to you when you heard it during the conversation with this person, is gold for you. Get this new contact to like you by following up about their children, the sports teams they follow, their hobbies, their vacations, etc. Keep in mind that what someone tells you during the so–called “small talk” is in reality important to them or they would not have mentioned it.
You need these bits of information as an excuse to hang an email because you cannot say “Hey, Bill, I was thinking about you.” Instead, you should your interest in them and your friendliness instead by saying “Hey Bill, how did your kids enjoy tennis camp this summer?”
Find ways to do small favors for them such as recommending a book they might like or introduce them to someone in their own industry they don’t know. Invite them for a coffee, breakfast or lunch and do not press too hard on business matters. Try to create a human connection.
It takes time for a potential client to get to like you. Do not give up. Be patient.
2) This New Contact Must Trust You
Liking you is a good start but not enough. The potential client must Trust you. You cannot stick out your hand and say Nice to me you, I’m Adolpho Babenco, a lawyer you can trust. Probably anyone who says that is most likely someone you should not trust. Developing Trust in you is another critical element in the decision-making process to hire you.
I am sure you agree that no one will give legal work to a lawyer they do not trust. Like the seeds in garden, Trust takes time to take root and grow. The elements necessary to obtain the trust of the potential clients are:
a) Your track record. Do you have a history
of successfully completing the kind of legal work this client is likely to need? A client will choose you because they believe that your past successes are likely indicators of your future successes. When a client chooses you, it is because they want to be your next success story.
b) Do your words and your actions match? Do you always do what you say? Are you punctual for meetings and calls.
c) Do you dress like a successful lawyer? This is superficial but nonetheless important. You only have one chance to make a first impression. You must look like the kind of lawyer this client would want to represent them. Your appearance must instill confidence.
d) Do you present yourself as a thought leader? That is, do you demonstrate that you have ideas and insights that other lawyers in your practice do not have? Let this person see you are not a commodity, that you are not interchangeable with other lawyers in your practice area.
e) Trust is also based on your leaving your ego at home. This potential client wants to know that they will be your center of focus. You do this by letting them talk most of the time. And your part of the conversation should be mostly questions. This will make the person feel that they are important to you.
If you are thinking that you should get these elements of creating trust out of the immediately when meet a new contact, you would be wrong. Let these elements of trust leak out to the client slowly while you are waiting for the client to have a legal matter for you to work on. If you try to convey all this information about trusting you at the first meeting, you will be seen as selling. And you will be selling to someone who is not a buyer at that moment. Control yourself.
Send them articles on the legal matters for which they might need your services. Get them to see that you really know what you are talking about, that you are a thought leader with opinions and insights that your competitor do not have.
3) A Legal Matter
Another basic reason you cannot sell your services to some right on the spot is because they do not have a legal matter to give you at that moment. You may be very smart, well recognized for your past successes and interesting ideas, have excellent experience, you may the best clients in the industry, and have a pleasing personality, but if the potential client has no legal matter for you to work on, you will not be hired.
Conclusion
Imagine you are a divorce lawyer. You would be wasting your time trying to sell your services to a happily married couple. No matter how you insist, no matter what arguments you employ or what bargain fee you offer, you will not sell your services to this couple. But time is the fourth dimension, and it is good this couple knows you and even likes you because they may not be so happily married in the future. And they might have friends who will want to know a divorce lawyer like you.
Change your paradigm. After a potential client knows and likes you, and after they have learned to trust you, when a legal matter that you can handle arises, you will get the work. And that is how you acquire new clients.
Good luck.
Coaching Available
The above is just the tip of the iceberg about how you can attract new clients. The partners of Silber, Vasquez & Associates are Certified Master Business and Life Coaches devoted entirely to helping lawyers grow their practice with more and better clients. What we have described above is a very small part of our coaching program for lawyers and teams of lawyers inside law firms.
Please contact us if you would like to know the specifics of how we can help you and your law firm. Feel free to contact us at:
+1 415 728-4244
Liza Vasquez and Jeffrey Silber
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